Existing
investments span from Africa to Asia, Europe to South America
and, of course, the US. Simi
Wurtzel will serve as comptroller and vice president of
finance; Ryan
Selkis will be director of investments at DCG.
The list of backers includes: Bain Capital Ventures, CIBC,
CME Ventures, MasterCard, New York Life, Transamerica Ventures
and RRE Ventures.
"Some of the earliest investments I made via
Bitcoin Opportunity Corp. included BitPay, Circle, Coinbase,
itBit, Ripple and Xapo – which at the time were long
shots for many investors," Silbert said in a statement.
"Since then, we’ve invested into 57 companies across 18
countries, and continue to grow at a rapid pace."
He sold
SecondMarket
,
the startup he founded that morped into an online stock exchange
for hot, private startups' shares, to Nasdaq last week.

Entrepreneur Barry
Silbert
REUTERS/Lucas
Jackson
Now he is setting up bitcoin-related
startup Digital Currency Group with the backing of
some big names in finance.
Barry Silbert doesn't appear to be a big fan of 'down time.'
DCG was formed after Genesis Global Trading and Grayscale
Investments - two companies built under the SecondMarket parent
company - were unified to support an early-stage investing
portfolio targeting digital currency operations. Grayscale
Investments manages the publicly traded Bitcoin Investment
Trust.